Beijing Welcomes The Disabled as China Never Has

By Maureen Fan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 6, 2008

BEIJING -- In recent weeks, Beijing's brand-new airport has been able to give a special welcome to thousands of Paralympic athletes from around the world because the government spent $1.7 million to lower washbasins and handrails, add Braille signs and transform 214 toilets into the accessible variety.

But in south Beijing, a former coal miner needs a nurse to help push him up a too-steep ramp leading to his apartment building. He has trouble boarding taxis and buses and finding restaurants without steps. He can't use a public toilet.

China is trumpeting the Paralympics as a way to improve awareness and better integrate its more than 83 million disabled citizens, almost a million of whom live in Beijing. But the reality is that China's disabled are largely invisible, dissuaded from going out in public by a lack of physical access, a deficit of jobs and routine discrimination.

"I need someone to lift me into a taxi and fold the wheelchair, or carry me on his back onto a bus," said Zhi Fumao, 48, whose legs were paralyzed in a mining accident a few years ago. "Public toilets have no arm rests; I can't squat."

Every city in the world could improve its facilities for the disabled, but in China, a traditional respect for the elderly and the weak has been eroded by Communist political campaigns and an overall lack of awareness of civil rights, according to advocates for the disabled.

In interviews with scores of people disabled by on-the-job accidents, car accidents, and diseases that in other countries would be curable, most said there was little they could do.

"Chinese government and society tends to treat the disabled with condescension, treating them like a charity case instead of giving them equal respect," said Meng Weina, head of the Beijing-based Huiling Community Service for the Mentally Disabled. "The big picture in China is, not only the disabled but even ordinary people lack civil rights."

Meng blamed the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, which ruptured family ties and smashed Confucian traditions. "After the liberation of China, the government launched too many movements which broke people's harmonious relationships," she said. "People don't have enough morality. The reform of China should restore those lost parts of our culture."

China has made progress, including providing handicapped-accessible buses; adding wheelchairs at park entrances; installing elevators in the Forbidden City, the palace of the former emperors; and building miles of bumpy, raised-patterned sidewalks for the blind. Conditions in Beijing are far better than in provincial cities and rural areas.

But officials have failed at enforcing the rules and creating public awareness. As a result, sidewalks for the blind are sometimes blocked or in places of limited value. Wheelchair ramps are not built long and low according to standards but short and steep, in order to save money. Restaurants regularly turn away those with physical deformities, advocates said.

"Disabled people are afraid to go out because people mock them. 'The way you look, how come you still go out?' they say," said Wu Runling, whose legs became deformed after he contracted a virus as a child. "Many parks now offer wheelchairs, but it's just for show. If you want to use them, there is no air in the tire or there is only one wheelchair and two or three of you."

Guide dogs, which cost more than $10,000, and artificial limbs, which run upwards of $1,400, remain prohibitively expensive to most Chinese. Only six people and an arts association on the mainland own guide dogs, said Guo Xinglin, a trainer at the four-year-old China Guide Dog Training Center in Dalian, the only one of its kind. "It is a problem of Chinese law. No law allows the guide dogs to enter public places," he said.

"If I want to go to the supermarket, the blind sidewalk cannot help me. Among my blind friends, no one depends on the blind path to go out," said Zhang Liang, 35, a blind massage therapist who like many sightless Chinese was forced to take on this profession. He lives in a back bedroom of his first-floor two-room clinic near the Eastern Third Ring Road. "Traffic in Beijing is so complicated and dangerous, I can't deal with it independently."

Near the Chang'an Theater in downtown Beijing, Wang Jianguo, 38, said he lost his left leg because of inflamed blood vessels. Xing Shengyou, 56, lost both legs in a car accident more than 10 years ago. Both men now eke out a living offering passersby rides on their specially modified motorcycles, which like all motorcycles are illegal in downtown Beijing. They ride during off hours, hoping to reduce the chances of getting caught by police.

"We ride in the street randomly," Xing said. "If we meet customers, we make 40 to 70 cents per ride. Although our life is hard, it's better than being a beggar. We have to depend on ourselves. What else can we do?"

Last month, Zhang Yuncai and his parents took his two brothers, who are largely paralyzed, to the nearby city of Tianjin. At the railroad station in Tianjin, a ramp for the disabled was blocked by bicycles. When Zhang tried to move the bikes, railway staffers argued with the family.

"My brothers love to go out. If they stay at home too long, they feel low," Zhang said. "I hope that after the Paralympics, more people will understand and care about the disabled."

Today's education campaigns may be having some effect. Bus drivers, who sometimes fail to stop at rush hour for wheelchair passengers, have become friendlier and more likely to stop during the Olympics and Paralympics, a special period for which city officials tried to train the entire city to be polite to its guests, many disabled people said.

Beijing has also trained thousands of volunteers in sign language and taught security guards how to search the disabled while respecting their privacy. But old attitudes linger: An official manual distributed to 100,000 Olympic volunteers sparked outrage this year by describing the disabled as "stubborn and controlling," as well as "defensive with a strong sense of inferiority."

Many disabled people here said that in sum, the Paralympics, which begin Saturday and last 11 days, are of limited value for the average Chinese citizen.

"Athletes who attend the Paralympics can benefit from it," said Zhang, the massage therapist. "When I was in school, there was only one major. I had no choice. Now, the blind can also choose music or literature, but only a small number can find work in their major. I recently met two blind people who studied computer science but they still have to work as massage therapists."

Limits in education mean an inability to find work, and that is one of the main reasons for the disparities, according to a former secretary of the China Disabled Person's Federation.

"Society should fit the disabled, instead of expecting the disabled to fit into society," said Ding Qiwen, a researcher with the federation. "China has done a lot in trying to make up for this, in education and in providing work skills training, but for most of the disabled in China, these things are still unreachable. The disabled in western and poor areas of China are still struggling to survive."

News researcher Zhang Jie contributed to this report.